Four militants killed in Manipur

Mumbai: Four militants were killed by police commandos in separate encounters in two districts of Manipur, official sources said today.

Police commandos of Imphal west district gunned down two militants of Kangleipak Communist Party-Military Council (KCP-MC) at Sekmai area.

Two 9mm pistols were recovered from the spot, the sources said.

The two might have been involved in the October 21 bomb blast here in which 17 persons were killed and over 30 injured.

Police commandos in Imphal east district killed two other militants.

As they intensified search operation, they were fired upon by the militants and in the ensuing encounter two militants were gunned down.

One nine mm pistol, three rounds of ammunition, demand letters of militant outfits--Kuki Revolutionary Army-United (KRA-U) and People's United Liberation Front (PULF)--were recovered from the spot, the sources said.

Over 320 persons including civilians were so far killed in militancy-related crimes this year in Manipur.

Source: www.mid-day.com

Next round of Naga talks in Netherlands

NEW DELHI: After a gap of nearly a year, peace talks between militant group NSCN-IM and the Centre will resume in the Netherlands later this month as
part of efforts to resolve the decades-old Naga issue.

"We will hold the next round of negotiation with the Central Government in the last week of October in The Hague," NSCN-IM leader D G Robert said.

NSCN-IM chairman Isak Chishi Swu and general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah will represent the group while the government will be led by Union Minister Oscar Fernandes, he said.

The meeting is considered crucial as it will be held after a gap of almost one year during which NSCN-IM raised question mark over the government's sincerity in resolving the issue.

Muivah, who was in India for almost a year, left for the Netherlands earlier this month to join Swu.

The government has held over 60 rounds of talks with the NSCN-IM to find an amicable solution to the vexed issue.

"The next round of talks will be significant as it will be held after a gap of almost one year," said Mani Charenmai, MP from Nagaland.

The NSCN-IM has been pressing for formation of a 'greater Nagalim' comprising all Naga-inhabited areas in the northeast. However, this has been opposed by Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh.
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From tomorrow, 'Govt of Gorkhaland' takes over

KOLKATA: After enforcing that car number plates in the Darjeeling hills carry the 'GL' marking, the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha has directed that all sig
nboards in the region should carry Gorkhaland in place of West Bengal from Friday.

GJM general secretary Roshan Giri said government offices such as the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council will have to bear the inscription 'Government of Gorkhaland' instead of 'Government of West Bengal' from Friday.

"In case of signboards at private establishments such as offices, shops and hotels, it should read Darjeeling and Kurseong, followed by 'Gorkhaland," Giri said.

"This is part of our non-coperation movement that is aimed at showing that we are not willing to stay under West Bengal's rule," he said.

This will also be applicable in areas such as Siliguri, Terai and the Dooars, he said.

District Magistrate of Darjeeling Surendra Gupta said the move was illegal and would be dealt with "appropriately".

"It is illegal and we will react when it is enforced. Home Secretary (Ashok Mohan Chakraborty) has stated the government's position clearly on October 13 and I have nothing to add to that," he said.

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Paramilitary forces rush to Assam

Guwahati: Caught in the storm: A woman and her children take shelter at a relief camp in Kharupetiya, near Guwahati, yesterday. The death toll rose to 49, including 15 people shot by police. Around a lakh people have fled their homes. Pic/apAn additional 2,000 paramilitary troopers were yesterday rushed to Assam to quell clashes between Muslim migrants and tribal groups that forced locals to flee their homes. The death toll in weekend ethnic clashes in Assam that displaced more than 1 lakh people has mounted to 49. The authorities claimed the situation is slowly getting back to normal. "Since violence broke out on Friday, 49 people have died; 15 in police firing and the rest in separate incidents of clashes," said Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi. Eight of the injured victims died yesterday in different hospitals. Curfew is still in force with shoot-on-sight orders issued to the security forces. The clashes between members of the Bodo tribal group and Muslim settlers, originally from Bangladesh, have witnessed raids on numerous villages by groups armed with bows and poison-tipped arrows, spears and machetes.Set ablaze"They set on fire a large a number of homes in my village," said Dipali Basumatary, who had taken shelter in a government-run relief camp.Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the root cause was a programme of "ethnic cleansing" implemented by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), a rebel group fighting for an independent tribal homeland. They want to drive out all non-Bodos from the area.

Source: www.mid-day.com

Retail chain Subhiksha to venture in the East

Mumbai: Food and grocery retail chain, Subhiksha, plans to expand its wings in the east soon, a top company official said.

"The company is already present in the north, south and western regions. To make its presence felt in the east, we will soon foray into the east," Subhiksha's Senior President, Sunil. Kataria, said

The company plans to set up a store in Kolkata by December, he said.

Currently, the company has around 1,580 supermarkets under its Subhiksha Retail brand in more than 100 cities. It plans to enhance this network to around 2,200 stores by the end of the current fiscal.
Source: www.mid-day.com

Shoot-at-sight orders in Assam after clashes

GUWAHATI: Shoot-at-sight orders were issued on Saturday in Assam's curfew-bound district of Udalguri, where seven people were killed and more than 50
injured in clashes between two communities even as a cluster of villages were set ablaze, officials said. "We have asked police, paramilitary and Army soldiers to shoot anybody found indulging in violent activities," Inspector General of Assam Police (Law and Order) Bhaskarjyoti Mahanta said. Violence broke out Friday between two communities in Rowta in Udalguri district, about 100 km north of Guwahati. "The situation is tense with the violence spreading to new areas in the district even as five more bodies were recovered, all of them shot at with poison-tipped arrows and hit with crude sharp implements," a police official said, requesting anonymity. More than 50 people were wounded, some with bullets. "More than 200 houses were set ablaze in about six villages," the official said. Thousands of villagers have fled their homes and are now sheltering in makeshift relief camps set up the police. "There are an estimated 4,000 people of various ethnic communities sheltered in camps. These people had fled fearing attacks or belonged to villages where miscreants had torched their homes," the official said. The immediate provocation for the clashes was the attack on a group of Village Defence Party (VDP) volunteers early Friday by armed miscreants. "The VDP members belonged to the tribal Bodo community and were attacked by members of a religious minority group and that sparked off the clashes," the official said. In August, the area witnessed similar clashes between two communities in which about 10 people were killed and several injured.
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Manipur’s aborted 1950 revolution

— Naorem Sanajaoba
Insurgency in the north eastern region triggered off with Manipur revolution in 1950. In the conventional Manipuri revolutionary historiography, some of the historians are used to marginalise the role of the Manipur Communist Party (MCP) of which, Hijam Irabot had been the supremo, and the Red Guard Council (RGC) had been the military apparatus with five red guard commanders that struck militarily at the post- annexation Manipur State and the Indian administrative apparatus from 1950 to 1951. The 1950 MCP revolution was undoubtedly aborted for many a reason- the inevitable and the erroneous.

It could have been possible that despite their studying two three books of Mao purchased from Silchar, the RGC leadership was not ideologically mature enough barring the supremo’s personal interface with Marxians in Sylhet jail .

Naturally, the MCP with its party supremo and the striking force– the RGC deserve full credit for launching the post- independence armed struggle- the first ever in Manipur in 1950, possibly a harbinger in the entire region. Pro-revolutionarys shows admiration for the methodology, revolutionary tactics he had taken care of, whereas revisionist capitalise on the event by omitting his revolutionism

International politics of the pre-and post-war period witnessed the communist polycentrism in the CPSU monolith to which the CPI belonged on the one hand, and Yugoslav or, Communist China specific communist configurations. The CPSU within had been a bundle of competing political theses including Zhadnov thesis that prevailed upon others in CPSU’s expansion of communist ideology towards the east- particularly Asia. The CPSU had recommended the then rising Maoist armed struggle for Asia. Strategically, in the over all cold war situation, the communist targeted the end of what N Lenin called imperialism and tactically, Mao Tse Tung’s tested peasant rebellion, particularly after its success in 1949 had been more suitable for non-European eastern question.

The CPI had, therefore, endorsed Calcutta conference resolutions for triggering off armed struggle in India, which included, , India-administered Manipur, Tripura and British Assam as well. Till the CPSU clandestinely mandated CPI through top secret channels to abandon BT Randive line of armed struggle for India in 1951, which the afoji could not receive while in Burma, the RGC did the armed struggle in Manipur valley in 1950-1951.

The CPI like the BCP (both white and red flags) considered Indian independence as sham, and it had to take up armed struggle largely, for the independence of India. At the time when the afoji left for Burma by default in 1951, the Burmese communist insurgency was at logger heads and more complicated, because, in 1946, Trotskyte Thakin Soe split pro- Maoist, Stalinist, all Burman BCP and formed the Red flag while, Thakin Than Tun and Ba Thienof BCP attended 1948 Calcutta conference. In March, 1948, BCP had started the armed uprising by way of implementing the thesis of HN Ghosal who was eliminated by Thakin Tan Tun a decade later , who in turn had also been liquidated , due to ideological reasons.

The Manipuri afoji was small enough to bring to terms the irreconcilable forces, at time when the BCP (white flag) Thakin Than Tun strictly followed the Cominform line- the Zhadnov approach, re-enunciated by Ghoshal. The most misconstrued access of the supremo to Burma had actually been firstly to gain arms aid from Burmese insurgents, secondly, to move easily in liberated zone in Burma, as the party so directed.

The RGC striking force had 32 trained red guards, supported by about 500 village guards and strong network of sympathisers from amongst the peasantry. Some writers had confused the 500 village guards as the graduated red guards. The red guards had struck upon the Manipur police, Manipur rifles and 4th Assam rifles. In 1950, the inaugural armed struggle was considered to be an unprecedented event.

Even today the CPI/CPM of India had to fight out the Communist Party Maoists that sustain armed struggle in 15 more Indian states outside the NE region. The latter unwittingly snubs the anti-revolutionary CPI-CPM as opportunistic, reactionary ,social imperialists comparable to their counterpart - the American imperialism. The debate goes on.

The MCP or, CPI later on, had probably not denounced Indian annexation of sovereign Manipur., unlike the socialist party or young socialist league or one of the two Congress factions in Manipur that strongly challenged the so called disputed merger of the country by a power which they considered foreign. One had to admit that in that age it was a big event which no one could fairly overlook even today.

The party supremo afoji and the MCP had given more emphasis on the Manipur revolution in conformity with the CPSU guidelines, CPI mandate than on the issue of Manipur annexation. The CPSU had been consistent in directly fraternalising national liberation movements in a large number of colonial situations, particularly in the third world. The historic de-colonisation UN, GA resolution no. 1514 of 1960 had been proposed by the USSR and seconded by India. CPSU’s fraternal party- CPI had espoused right of people to self-determination till 1951; CPI member Somnath Lahiri espoused right to secession of constituent states of India in the Constituent Assembly. The CPI actively supported the right to self determination of Pakistan.

The de- annexation agenda is the contribution of the post-MCP gen-next and their organised rebellion or insurgency, which the Government of India is yet to fully address to as on today . Certain issues like Purnadayitaysheel shashan and Swadhin Bharatkee Manungda Swadhin Manipur of a 1946 civil society resolution had created more confusion than necessary.

Barring the Praja Mandal and Nikhil Manipuri Mahashbha meeting resolution, dated 5-4-1946 which, asked for independent Manipur inside independent India, holding plebiscite to decide the possible integration of Manipur with another province, the MCP or its frontal organisation did not ask for sovereign status of Manipur. The political by-products had been transformation of rebels into the CPI in Manipur, and the involvement of some of the ranking MCP activists [ not RGC command] initiating the Meetei state committee armed struggle in 1960s and the grand initiative of L Manimohon and L Kanhai of the MCP in hatching the UNLF, among others.

Political assassinations happened decades after. Subsequently thereafter, the next phase of guerrilla war of the PLA (eastern division) and PREPAK happened in the valley in 1979, supposedly, heavier in tone, ideology and texture than that of the aborted 1950 MCP revolution, to be followed by the MPA guerrilla offensives in the 1990s. The rest is the recent story unfolding frame after frame, before our own eyes.

The red guards revolution in 1950-1951 left a profound, indelible impact on informed Manipuri world view and onward progression of a composite, egalitarian history of the ancient Asian State. The MCP revolution remains a pathfinder in a redefined , better articulated political landscape.
(The writer is former Dean, Law Faculty, GU) source: assam tribune